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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN 
LIBERTY AND SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 



A DISCOURSE 



REV. FREDERICK FROTHINGHAM, 



AT PORTLAND, MAINE, 



ON FAST BAY, APRIL I6fh, 18b1. 



NEAY YORK: 
AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, 

138 NASSAU STREET. 
1857. 



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DISCOURSE. 



Our Governor, in a proclamatioQ which does him 
honour as a Christian ruler, calls upon us to honour the 
example of our Forefathers and to seek " the good which 
may be derived from consecrating a secular day to medi- 
tation and the humbling ourselves together before the 
Lord," by observing this day as a day of Public Humilia- 
tion, Fasting and Prayer. The need of Humiliation, pub- 
lic and private, of Fasting in the old prophetic sense, of 
Prayer far more earnest, deep and vital than is common 
among us, I certainly shall be the last to question. For, 
to use an old expression, but which is not altogether true, 
" we have fallen upon evil days " ; "judgment is turned 
away backward and justice standeth afar off; truth is 
fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter." We live 
in the days when men " decree unrighteous decrees," and 
" write grievousness which they have prescribed, to turn 
aside the needy for judgment, and to take away the right 
from the poor of my people, that widows may be their 
prey, and that they may rob the fatherless." "We live to 
feel a new and dreadful illustration of Jeremiah's mourn- 
ful words : " Oh that mine head were waters and mine 
eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night 
for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh that I 
had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, 
that I might leave my people and go from them ! for they 
be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. And 
they bend their tongues, like their bow, for lies ; but they 
fire UQt valiant for the truth upon the earth ; for they 



proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith 
the Lord. Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and 
trust ye not in any brother ; for every brother will utterly 
supplant " ; " they have taught their tongue to speak lies 
and weary themselves to commit iniquity." And still see 
we God's words, as uttered by Isaiah's hallowed lips, 
illustrated anew : '' Yet they seek me daily, and delight 
to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and 
forsook not the ordinance of their God ; they ask of me 
the ordinances of justice ; they take delight in approach- 
ing to God." The mournful strains of those great pro- 
phetic souls but too truly paint the audacious front of sin 
that defies God among us to-day — defies him all the worse 
because pretending a holy zeal for the honour of His law. 
We have, indeed, reason for Humiliation, Fasting and 
Prayer. 

Of the various subjects fitting to this occasion, I have 
accepted one whose claim was too imperious to be resisted. 
I do not say " selected," for it was hardly a matter of 
choice. On this day of national humiliation, the thought 
uppermost is that of national sin ; and of national sins 
there is one of so appalling prominence that it would be 
a mere affectation to turn from it. I urged on you, last 
Sunday, an honest service this day. Let me not cast a 
shade over that recommendation by avoiding that theme 
which ought in all our souls to be a whip of shame and a 
spur to repentance, a subject deserving the devoutest 
consideration, whether on Sunday or on Fast day, in the 
church of God or the place of private prayer, in the states- 
man's cabinet or the merchant's office, in the secret soul 
of every man who respects himself, loves his race, or 
reveres his God. 

I ask your attention, therefore, to some thoughts on 
the Significance of the Struggle between Liberty and 
Slavery in America. 

My text is the demand made by the Athenian sophists 
of Paul : 

" We would know what these things mean " (Acts xvii. ', 20), 



The significance of this struggle is very little under- 
stood, or, if understood, men are largely treacherous to 
their highest convictions. The former view is to be pre- 
ferred as more charitable, and therefore more likely to be 
correct. Did men see it in its true colours, thay would 
not dare proscribe utterance concerning it. The man who 
should attempt this would be overwhelmed by an indig- 
nant public opinion such as would meet him if he dared 
to advocate lying, robbery, murder or arson. So far from 
being kept out of the pulpit, excluded from Sunday, 
severed from religion, it would be the subject of special 
preaching and special prayer. Men would take up, in 
regard to it, Daniel Webster's memorable words uttered 
on the Rock of Plymouth, and repeat them as part of his 
charge to every teacher of religion. No longer regarded 
as a mere football kicked between two great political 
parties, it would become a weighty portion of every man's, 
woman's and child's religion. It would blend in each 
day's prayer. It would form a part of each man's earnest 
daily thought. Every loving mother would teach her 
children to revere the name of Liberty, and every father 
would swear his son at the altar as a foe to Slavery, even 
as Hamilcar swore the boy Hannibal as a foe to Rome. 

How different from this the fact ; it needs no telling. 
Liberty no longer holds the high place in men's affections 
that she once occupied. Slavery is no longer, even in the 
eyes of New England men, an intolerable curse. The 
thought of it does not stir men to indignation. Opposi- 
tion to it does not excite universal sympathy even in New 
England, that boasts herself to be free and is so free. The 
anti-slavery gatherings are small and feeble in numbers 
and in purse. The name of Abolitionist, though it be to 
abolish the foulest wrong that ever stained the earth, is a 
term of opprobrium and of reproach. 

Let me first trace the course of events which has led to 
this result. It will set forth in a clearer right the signifi- 
cance of the great struggle. 

The good angel and the evil angel of America appeared 



6 



at about the saine time. It was in 1G20 that Plymouth 
gave its stern welcome to 101 souls, as sturdy, brave and 
firm as its own famous rock. Strong of heart were they, 
men of religion, filled with an awful trust in God and an 
indomitable love of Liberty. These were the Fathers of 
New England, men of one idea, or at most two, but that 
idea great enough to be the life of a world, as it has been 
of New England ever since, and has made her what we 
are all proud to know she is. 

In August, 1619, little more than a year before the 
landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, the unconscious waters 
of Chesapeake Bay bore and gave their sunny welcome to 
a sadder freight than that which Plymouth Bay received. 
A dark slave-ship sailed up to Jamestown, with its dusky 
freight of 20 human souls, stolen from Africa. They 
came to a colony which, broken down at home, had sought 
America to retrieve its fortunes. Lazy and shiftless, they 
hailed the coming of their dark-skinned brethren, but 
with no brother's welcome ; no sympathy for the woes of 
those broken-hearted men ; but work, work, work, in a 
service harder than that of the children of Israel of old 
under the taskmasters of Egypt. 

Here are the two ideas, Liberty and Slavery — planted 
at about the same time, in the virgin soil of the new con- 
tinent ; the one in the North, the other in the South. 
They are deadly foes. Which shall conquer ? 

A third idea, common to North and South, forms a bond 
of union and an important element in the struggle — the 
idea of Property. 

Liberty and Slavery — which shall conquer ? 

At the first they did not seem opposed. The moral 
vision of Christendom was not then educated to perceiv- 
ing their eternal opposition. Even the early descendants 
of the Pilgrims saw it not. For, although they were 
Bible men, they held fast by the letter, which killeth. 
They saw there that, ages ago, slaves were held in Israel ; 
that men, provided they did not belong to the race of 
God's chosen children, might be held in slavery. They 



did not, except dimly, perceive the spirit of the Bible, 
■which uproots slavery forever. That don't come all at 
once to anybody. The letter was enough for them. The 
negroes being heathen and found convenient, slavery 
spread all over New England and existed in all the Colo- 
nies. But the spirit of liberty opposed it for all that. In 
spite of their literalism, which fettered there minds, those 
great souls had a true vision into the mysteries of the 
Gospel, which freed their action. Though slavery existed 
in New England, it was a far different thing from slavery 
in the Middle and Southern Colonies. Slaves were bought 
and sold, indeed, but their condition was rather that of 
indented servants than of chattels personal. They were 
to have " all the liberties and Christian usages which the 
law of God, established in Israel, requires." That these 
were, on the whole, calculated to destroy slavery, every 
student of the Bible who has examined the question well ^ 
knows. 

Time passed on. The day of the great struggle for 
national independence began to dawn. The day of strug- 
gle for a higher independence had not begun to dawn. 
In the meantime, the climate and soil, the character of 
the people and the religion of the Northern Colonies 
silently, but steadily, pushed back slavery. The climate 
and soil, the character of the people and the irreligion of 
the Southern Colonies favoured its development. While 
Northern laws tended to amelioration and diminution of 
the evil, Southern laws tended to its extension and per- 
petuation. The English rule that slaves should follow 
the condition of the father was abolished, and that fatal 
rule adopted, parent of a large part of the existing slavery, 
that they should follow that of the mother. The recog- 
nised rule that slaves who had become Christians should 
be free was abolished, and it was decreed that Christians 
might be slaves. Answer enough this to the misstatement 
that England fastened slavery on this country. 

The opposition between the principles begins to appear 
thus in their opposite tendencies. The struggle for 



8 



national liberty began. The tendency of this was to 
develope the sentiment of liberty over all the land ; in 
the Northern Colonies to strengthen the tendency towards 
liberty already existing, in the Southern to retard the 
progress of the opposite tendency. So strong and noble 
was the feeling that it found expression in that magnifi- 
cent paper, certainly to be forever treasured by every 
American — yea, by every man that loves his brother-man 
— the Declaration of Independence ; not a tissue of " glit- 
tering generalities," as it has been called by a New Eng- 
land man, but of fundamental truths, without which the 
nation must perish. 

The great struggle ended. America became free. And 
now the struggle for the independence of man began to 
dawn. The two principles, which had flowed silently side 
by side for a century, now began to be found iHCompatible. 
The child, grown to majority, had now to take care of 
himself. Shall he follow his good angel, or shall the evil 
mislead him lo his ruin ? 

The two Ideas came face to face, over against each 
other, in the debates on the Constitution. Northern dele- 
gates, and the noblest of the Southern, held out against 
Slavery. South Carolina and Georgia were firm as a rock 
in its behalf. The two parties seemed immovable. A 
great gulf was fixed between them. How could it be 
bridged over? The appeal to the instinct of Property in 
the Northern mind finally settled the question. Slavery 
was permitted to exist. The Slave Trade was left undis- 
turbed for twenty years — for a commercial consideration ! 
Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire were 
found voting for this last by the side of Georgia, the two 
Carolinas and Maryland! Delaware and Virginia ranged 
into line with Pennsylvania and New Jersey against it. 

The evil deed was done. The sin openly committed 
when it might have been destroyed. The consequences 
were to come. 

The enthusiasm and the memories of the Revolution 
did not perish at once. They still worked in the minds 



of many. Slavery was odious to the best and greatest 
minds. It will be only necessary to mention such names 
as Franklin, Madison, Patrick Henry, Jefferson and Wash- 
ington as its foes. The love of Freedom was strong in the 
public mind. The celebrated Ordinance of 1787, passed 
in the same year as the present United States Constitu- 
tion was adopted, was adopted by a unanimous vote. It 
excluded slavery from the then North-West Territory. 
Energetic measures were taken to procure emancipation. 
The result was that gradually Slavery was abolished or 
died out in the Northern States. Slavery was weak as 
yet, strong only in the obstinacy of its wicked will. But 
it lived still. Nourished by the foreign Slave Trade, it 
continued its vampyre growth. As the market for 
Southern staples increased, and cotton came into cultiva- 
tion, slaves rose in value. The '•' property " must be 
protected. The Southern States demanded, in 1793, a law 
for the rendition of Fugitives. They obtained one, which 
contained the most odious provision of the Fugitive 
Slave act of 1850, struck down the constitutionally guar- 
anteed right of trial by jury for every man charged with 
being a slave, and put it in the power of every magistrate 
base enough to be bribed or weak enough to be persuaded 
to send a freeman into slavery. 

The tradition of Liberty still lived, though the love of 
it began to slacken under the influence of commercial 
prosperity and peace. The year fixed as the term at 
which the Slave Trade might be abolished, 1808, came, 
and the foreign Slave Trade was abolished, though not 
without a battle. The internal Slave Trade, however, 
remains to this day untouched— one of the most cruel and 
barbarous of all the creations of this abominable crime. 

Here Liberty paused. She had done what she could, 
and looked now to a speedy decay on the part of Slavery. 
Her energies were suspended under this delusive hope. 
She had long looked forward to it, as men now look for- 
ward to non-extension, as the axe which should destroy 
slavery. She now expected to see Slavery droop and die. 



10 



Slavery, however, now grown strong and consistent, could 
do without the foreign Slave Trade. Instead cf dying, 
she brought a new State into the Union— Louisiana, 
purchased from France, with its new votes, its new influ- 
ence, and a new principle which must be used indefinitely 
for the furtherance of the purposes of Slavery. Grown 
bolder by necessity and success, ten years after, in 1821, 
the Slave Power, over the back of Mr. Clay's fatal 
Compromise, brought Missouri into the confederation. 
Liberty, not yet dead, affrighted, arose and made a bold 
and desperate opposition. But she was no longer upper- 
most in the nation's heart. At the best she held a divided 
affection. Traditionally she was revered and worshipped, 
but, like Religion among us now, too good save for holi- 
days and Sundays— not useful enough for every day wear. 
Consequently, before the black solid column of Slavery 
she was compelled to retire. 

The two Ideas are now fairly face to face, the one 
strong in the strength of truth and right, the other strong 
in the flush of success and the pride of power and will. 
They recognise now that they are hostile. Slavery says 
" We will drive you to the wall, and when we have you 
there once more, we mean to keep you there, and nail you 
down like base money." There is no mistaking that 
language. 

Liberty does not return the taunt. Even were she able, 
she would not. But she is not able. She feels a creeping 
weakness in her frame. The Free States have now a 
divided affection. They are no longer hers with a single 
love. The instinct of Property, grown into a bad love of 
Gain, now divides the empire of the Northern heart with 
her. Slavery, on the other hand, is a unit. She is deter- 
mined and resolute in extending her bounds and power. 
A danger appears on her Southern frontier. Texas 
becomes free from Mexico and adopts a free Constitution. 
This is not to be tolerated. A Free State on the Southern 
frontier is dangerous to Slavery. And so Texas must be 
annexed as a Slave State. In face of fierce Northern 



11 



opposition, which strangely cooled under an appeal to 
Northern cupidity, Texas was annexed, and, of all the 
days in the year, on the 22d of December, 1845! Was 
this coincidence accidental ? Was there not a deep sig- 
nificance in it ? Was it not the rubbing out from Ameri- 
can politics of the great Idea fixed in it on that memorable 
22d December a century and a quarter before. Liberty 
now is conquered. 

From this point the descent is swift and fearful. 
Slavery became the controlling element in American 
politics. Restless and insatiate, it soon led the country 
into the meanest, most cowardly and wicked of wars — the 
war with Mexico. The defection of Northern men became 
appalling, " My country, however bounded," " My coun- 
try, right or wrong," as if there was no Righteousness, 
no Religion, no God in the universe, became applauded 
sentiments. The newspapers teemed with them. The 
war ended. A battle took place over the new territory 
robbed from Mexico. It was long, and fierce, and deadly. 
A Compromise settled it. Slavery triumphed again, and 
this time at an awful cost to New England. For now 
Northern degradation was complete. The great man of 
New England, the idol of New Eagland idolatry, the hope 
and pride of every New England man, snatched from his 
head the laurels of a long life, that he might bow that 
honoured crown to the hateful yoke. I know no one sad- 
der event in American history ; none that seems to 
demand so profound a sorrow. To see a great man fall — 
and such a fall !— is a sight to make angels weep. The 
heart of New England groaned with an unspeakable 
sorrow. Under the shadow of that great affliction her 
soul sat dumb. She scarcely noticed how many of her 
prominent men hastened, in the new light gained by the 
removal of that colossal form, to conquer the prejudices 
in favour of Liberty which they had sucked in from their 
mothers' bosoms. Shehad no heart now to welcome back 
the great fallen one. She could not understand the new 
injunctions that he laid upon her. She could not under- 



12 



stand, though he said it, that there was no Higher Law, 
that her religious convictions must be silenced, that the 
traditions of the Pilgrim Fathers were all an empty- 
sound. And the speedy revelations made her by Southern 
man-stealers in her own streets, a Court-house in chains, 
men carried ofif without a jury trial to a bondage worse 
than death, were not the best of commentaries to help her 
weak understanding. She mourned with a bitter sorrow 
— I trust that godly sorrow which worketh repentance 
not to be repented of. Those dreary, dreary days ! As P 
look back on them now, in the freer air of this time, I 
wonder how we breathed then at all. 

But though Liberty was thus trodden under foot, she 
still lived. She forsook the temples where her form was 
worshipped, but herself defamed, to take up her abode, 
not in a manger, but in an equally obscure place, a city 
cellar. Like her dear Lord and friend, the Christ, whose 
presence always brings Liberty, she deserted not the 
ungrateful men who crucified her, but took on her the 
form of a servant, that even thus she might bless man- 
kind. In 1831 her voice was heard, from that humble 
chamber, in tones that went straight to the heart of 
Slavery, " I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will 
not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — and Iwill he 
heard.''^ In that cellar, in a man so obscure that the 
Mayor of Boston had difficulty in finding him out 
— the guilty heart of Slavery, however, felt the thrill 
of his first tones— the freedom of a race began. The 
Declaration of Independence, indeed, was given forth— 
and that Declaration was that Slavery must die. That hum- 
ble man filled the Slave Power with alarm. It knew 
instinctively that the beginning of the end was come. 
How is it that politicians, instead of wearying themselves 
and everybody else with their theories of non-extension, 
do not take a hint from this fact ? The Slave Power set 
a price of $5,000 on his head. But he went on, gathered 
a few, perhaps eleven, I know not, faithful souls, who 
proclaimed boldly, in spite of coldness and abuse, of 



13 



threats and mobs, the Gospel of Universal Freedcm. He 
proved himself a prophet by the ancient approved tests 
of prophecy, the purity of his life and the fulfilment of 
his predictions. He was a humble man, unknown, a man 
of one idea, but that idea large enough to regenerate a 
nation. He appealed not to political parties — they were 
corrupt ; no longer to the Churches — they frowned on 
Liberty ; not to force — that is an unchristian way of 
advancing Truth, or rather it is no way — but to the con- 
science of the nation and to that alone. 



Men of a thousand shifts and -wiles, look here ! 
See one straightforward conscience put in pawn 
To win a world; see the obedient sphere 
By bravery's simple gravitation drawn I 

O Truth ! Freedom ! how are ye still born 
In the rude stable, in the manger nursed ! 
What humble hands unbar those gates of morn 
Through which the splendours of the New Day burst ! 

What ! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell, 
Front Rome^s far reaching bolts, and scorn her frown? 
Brave Luther answered Yes; that thunder's swell 
Rocked Europe, and cischarmed the triple crown. 

Whatever can be known of earth we know, 

Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail shells curled; 

No, said one man in Genoa, and that No 

Out of the dark created this New World. 



And so it was here. That brave conscience, sowing 
itself on soil fertile with Pilgrim life, brought forth fruit. 
It was the leaven that leavened the whole lump of New 
England. It did not work alone. Leaven never does. 
God worked with it. The stream of events confirmed 
again, again, and yet again, that man's most daring 
prophecy. Yet he continued despised and rejected, a 
man of sorrows indeed, as every true Reformer is, and is 
despised and rejected still. The prophet has no honour 
in his own country now, any more than in the days of 
Christ. But there is honour in store for him. When the 
war of Independence now raging shall end in victory, 
and the nation settle from the strife, and men shall 



14 



reverently recall the memory of the noble souls who led 
the van of battle, the name of Garrison shall hold the 
foremost and brightest place. 

But to return. The political and moral corruption 
consequent on the Fugitive Slave Bill soon permitted 
new assaults on Liberty. The repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise, that unnameable breach of plighted faith, 
stunned the Northern States. It opened a new view of 
Slavery, but that they might have seen before had they 
but felt disposed. The events which have succeeded that 
with astounding rapidity — the Ostenfl Manifesto, the 
atrocities in Kansas, the assault on New England's noblest 
Senator, the designs on Cuba, the beginning of agitation 
for the revival of the foreign Slave Trade, once declared 
piracy, and, last, that monstrous decision of the United 
States Supreme Court, which has fallen on us like a 
thunderclap, and whose breadth and depth of wickedness 
we have as yet no idea of— are too familiar to us all to 
need more than mention here. They may well make us 
all pause, and exclaim, in the words of our text, " we 
would know what these things mean." 

We have thus rapidly sketched the course of the great 
struggle between Liberty and Slavery in our country. 
We have seen that the two Ideas came to America together 
— that then public opinion thought them compatible : this 
delusion gradually broke away and was dispelled in the 
great tumult of the Revolution ; that, after that struggle, 
the sentiment of Liberty was universal and Slavery 
frowned upon ; that gradually Slavery stole on its uu' 
guarded foe 5 came to a position of equality 5 and thence, 
by a rapid succession of bold steps, to the position of 
control. And there it stands to-day — the Congress, the 
Executive, the Army, the Navy, and, most powerful of 
all, the Judiciary in its hands. And yet, in all these 
seventy years, the Free States have grown in number and 
population, so that now they outnumber by one the Slave 
States, and vastly surpass them in population, in prosperi- 
ty, wealth, mechanical ingenuity, and moral and religious 



15 



character. But the love of Liberty has declined ; and 
men sit quiet to-day under an enactment which, seventy 
years ago, would have set the country in an inextinguish- 
able blaze from end to end. Nay, signs appear of pre- 
paration for a new compromise with that deceitful power 
which controls the land. Men talk still of limiting the 
extension of Slavery, in the face of a Supreme Court 
decree that knocks the ground from under their feet. 
Limit a monster grown to full age, whose babyhood was 
more than a match for their fervent young love of Liberty ! 
Limit a monster who has proved himself a monster of 
iniquity ! I am no politician, but I have common sense ; 
and my common sense tells me it cannot be done. It is 
impracticable, were it not wrong. The Slave Power 
beats us vastly in cunning. It has the national power in 
its hands. It has no conscience. It can beat us at its 
weapons. But take the hint given by that one word from 
the obscure cellar in Boston. Throw yourselves on the 
Eternal Law of God. Brand the monster as a monster of 
iniquity, and you'll crumple him up like a piece of paper. 

The aspect of this dreadful struggle is fearfully dark 
to-day. But there are signs of a coming dawn. The 
Almighty still lives. The devoted band who love God 
and man so well that they never can consent that God's 
child or man's brother shall ever be a slave, grows slowly, 
preparing for a great and glorious future. The struggle 
now is in reality a struggle between this little band and 
the powers of Slavery. I know very few of you believe 
this, but it is true, and time will prove it. I am content 
to wait. But I am not content that they who come within 
the range of my voice, and whose well-being is very near 
my heart, should neglect this great salvation. It has, my 
friends, a profound significance for us, will we but open 
our eyes to behold and stretch our hand to grasp it. 

Let me now speak of its significance. I must be brief. 

1. This struggle is significant, as it offers to us every 
one a glorious opportunity and a noble means of develop- 
ing the highest manly and womanly character. It is a 



16 



stern discipline, this discipline of Anti-Slavery. It puts 
all sorts of shams to a terribly severe test. Look at it 
yourselves a moment with the eye of your common sense 
and you shall see at once. What exercise of faith so 
strong as that which shall lead us to take up a cause 
against such fearful odds as oppose us here ? What better 
school of patience than to work on, year after year, amid 
misunderstanding, misrepresentation, coldness, desertion, 
trying, with but small success, to help those who are un- 
willing to be convinced? What school of love to God 
and man so valuable as that which shall teach you, or give 
you abundant occasion for, its meekest and most self-con- 
straining exercise? What trial of honesty and of love of 
truth nobler than that which puts you forever on the hunt 
for the truth, which casts you on that as your chief foun- 
dation, and makes you strong in that alone? What training 
of courage so fair as that which compels you to utter con- 
victions opposed to the current opinions, and which shall 
bring on yourselves notice, perhaps odium ? What culture 
of the finest humanities so beautiful as that which leads 
you to regard every human being as a child of God, no 
matter how degraded, how desolate, how forlorn ? What 
development of the moral sense within you sublimer than 
that which plants you on the Eternal Rock of Justice, 
Rlghteousnesss and the High Law of God, demanding that 
these be administered faithfully to men, women and little 
ones whom you know only through report? What proof 
and trial of self-sacrifice more holy, and more dear to the 
heart of God, than the taking up the cause of them whom 
men look down upon as unworthy of regard ? We glory 
in the old heroic days of knighthood and chivalry. But 
what made them so glorious? The shining armour, the 
gleaming gold, the flaunting banner, or the trumpet ringing 
in the breeze? Was it the splendour of developed man- 
hood imparting some of its own fire and spirit to the brave 
creature which bore it, making both nobler ? I think not. 
These men take delight in, but they touch not the heart 
It is what the heart embalms that lives. Oh, none of these. 



11 



It was, that knightly valour deemed itself honoured in 
being the champion of the oppressed ; in being that which 
God here gives us the opportunity of becoming. 

But it shall help you not by discipline alone. It shall 
help you by giving a clearer vision. Truth is bread to 
the soul. This cause of Liberty bravely taken up shall 
open your eyes. You shall see wondrously the difference 
of things. Shams shall be marvellously exposed. It shall 
help you to the perception of the noblest self-sacrifice now 
working unobserved, save by the unobtrusive eye of God. 
You shall be amazed, your heart shall bound with joy to 
behold the grandeur and the humbleness of the chivalry of 
our country and age — a chivalry which most men see not 
at all — a chivalry hidden behind dark skins and under the 
humble garments of many a brave but all unnoticed man 
and woman. I do not hesitate to refer you to the records 
of the Anti-Slavery struggle and to the ranks of the de- 
spised and persecuted opponents of Slavery for examples 
of heroism which shall make your eyes dim with delight, 
if you have the heart to recognise them, and for men and 
women equalled by no other class in society for their com- 
bination of high qualities ; men and women of a love 
stronger than death, of an honesty that you can trust with 
untold gold, of a womanly tenderness of feeling, of a faith 
in God that will trust Him though He slay. You call them 
narrow, as if that were worse than to be untrue. Narrow 
perhaps they are ; but it is the narrowness not of ideas or 
of heart, but of compression by a pressure from without 
which has made them firm and solid as cannon-balls. As 
I think on them all, and on the mighty agency which this 
great struggle has exerted on them in making them men 
and women indeed, I feel profoundly that we are unworthy 
to take up this glorious cause. To take it up with all our 
feeble might would make us men and women ; would bap- 
tize us anew into the spirit of our great forefathers. Far 
from thinking it a condescension on our part, we should 
thank God for the great privilege and boon of being per- 
mitted to take up a work so ennobling. 



18 



This, friends, I think, is the great significance of this 
struggle for Liberty. It makes a nobler race of men and 
women — men and women indeed and in earnest. Such 
earnest natures are the fiery pith, the compact nucleus, 
round which systems grow ; mass after mass becomes in- 
spired therewith, and whirls impregnate with the central 
glow. 

2. It is a struggle in whieh the mightiest interests are 
involved. Men tell you that it is merely a political affair. 
But, if they are honest in saying so, they do not know what 
they are saying. It is, indeed, a political afifair of the 
most serious importance ; involving the very existence of 
the Republic. In fact, a Republic exists no longer except 
in some of our State Governments. Our National Govern- 
ment is an odious Oligarchy. But this is more than a 
political matter. Have we not seen that in the early his- 
tory of our country the English rule that children should 
follow the condition of the father was abolished, and the 
rule adopted that they should follow that of the mother — 
a rule whose disastrous effects on the morals of the coun- 
try no language can portray — which has produced that 
very amalgamation that men adduce as an unanswerable 
argument against abolition ? So far as it has force, it is 
in favour of abolition : for slavery is its most fruitful cause. 
Have we not seen that, in defiance of European senti- 
ment, it was early decreed that Christians might be slaves ? 
Christ's disciples bought and sold, married and divorced, 
re-married and re-divorced, treated as cattle ! Oh, God ! 
the thought is too horrible. Our holy religion thus tram- 
pled under foot. Do we not all know that, in defiance of 
plighted troth, a solemn contract was trampled under 
foot after the consideration had been received? Truth 
thus trodden on. And surely the remembrance of vio- 
lence in the halls of legislation, of unparalleled barbaric 
ties in Kansas, of the brazen usurpation in the Supreme 
Court of the United States, is fresh enough in all our 
memories to tell us that peace, courtesy, humanity, jus- 
tice are all at stake. And do we not all know that 



19 



slavery itself is the " sum of all villanies," a colossal 
injustice, as my brother of this city well said, on last 4th 
of July, " robbery its father and its mother a lie." Oh ! 
friends, this is no temporary or superficial matter. It is 
one which concerns all that is and ought to be dear and 
sacred to our hearts, all that is cherished by man every- 
where. It touches very nearly our manhood and woman- 
hood, those sdicred Affections which are the essence and 
charm of our homes, that sacred relation of marriage 
whose purity is essential to the well-being of any nation, 
those eternal principles of Righteousness and Justice, 
Honour and Truth which are the very foundation of 
society. And, last and deepest of all, that Religion 
which is the very life of every soul. The conflict is not 
a strife of politics alone, but a struggle of Religion and 
Irreligion, of Order with Disorder, of Self-sacrifice with 
Selfishness, of Civilization with Barbarism, of Right with 
"Wrong, of God with Satan. 

3. And lastly, indications show that it is the final 
struggle between Liberty and Slavery. Slavery has dis- 
appeared from Europe. The European nations, except 
Spain, have freed their slaves abroad. In Russia it is 
very different from ours and approaching gradually free 
dom. Slavery now awaits only America's decision to 
disappear from the earth, and for the emancipated nations 
to chant one great triumph completed in the struggle of 
Christianity with sin. The world shall then have taken 
one step Godward. It is the mightiest struggle the 
world has ever seen. It differs from all others in being 
within ourselves. It is not at a distance, as "West India 
emancipation was. It is the casting out of the demon 
which shall tear our own body. It is like the struggle 
between a man and his own deepest sin. That cast out, 
it is cast out forever. The conflict hastens to its decision. 
On the one side the black Goliath of Slavery comes for- 
ward from the midst of the Philistine host of all the 
tyrannies, despotism, slaveries, wickednesses of the earth. 
He is bold and confident. He defies the armies of Israel. 



20 



The young David of Liberty, the youngest son of his 
father, whom his brothers will not believe in, strong, not 
in his political armour, but simply " in the name of the 
Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel," stands 
in the midst of the affrighted men of Israel, the hopes, 
the prayers, the oppressed, the good, the free of mankind, 
who fear that his littleness cannot stand the mighty 
shock. The lists are clearing. All 6ther Combats cease 
to have interest. Tariffs, Banks, Sub-treasuries, Free 
Trade, all retire from the field. The expectant nations 
of the earth pause awhile and gather around and watch 
the conflict. The oppressor and the oppressed, the tyrant 
and the serf, the aristocrat and the democrat, the well- 
fed and the hungry look on with eager eyes — eyes sharply 
watching the signs of the coming day of decision. Never 
before was there such a struggle. Never before hung 
hopes so vast and so various, so mighty and so deep upon 
a single issue. The eyes of mankind are fixed upon it ; 
the fate of mankind for long ages to come is suspended 
there. If the giant fall, a jubilee for all the oppressed is 
near, such as earth ne'er saw nor dreamed before. If 
David fall, the progress of mankind is turned backward, 
the lessons of history are unlearned, and the human race 
for centuries to come must wander in darkness, and wade 
through seas of blood to regain the point where now it 
stands. That decision-hour may be very near. Men and 
women, are you prepared to meet it? 

Such, my friends, is some of the significations of this 
momentous struggle. It is now the centre of the world's 
gaze. It is, of all earthly questions, beyond all doubt 
the chief. God's newMessiah, in very deed, it offers to 
every one of us an opportunity for growth in manly and 
womanly life such as the age of chivalry never dreamed 
of. Reaching, as it does, away down to the very man- 
hood of man, it includes within its great embrace every- 
thing which distinguishes man from the brute and from 
matter, intellect, government, morality, religion, all the 
possibilities of man's future life. The great question is 



21 



working itself out of the long struggle of ages, to be 
settled on its own merits. Now freed from all extraneous 
questions that distracted men's attention by their appeal 
to personal and selfish feeling, Liberty and Slavery, naked 
now, approach each other in final conflict. Liberty or 
Slavery, which will you have ? Humanity hangs breath- 
less on the answer. 

In the presence of this great emergency, is not this a 
time for humiliation, fasting and prayer ? Humiliation, 
that we have all been so blind to God's handwriting on 
the wall, so deaf to God's high summons, so careless of 
His grand opportunity ? Fasting, not by abstaining from 
material food, but by penitence and sorrow, by high reso- 
lution and an earnest purpose of a nobler life ? Prayer, 
that we may have strength and grace given us to achieve 
a life whose end shall be the breaking every yoke, whe- 
ther physical, mental, moral or spiritual? Prayer, that 
our country, in this great hour of her trial, may be true to 
the memories of the Pilgrim Fathers, true to the great 
idea from which she was born and on which she grew 
up, true to the interests of down-trodden and oppressed 
humanity everywhere, true to the mighty opportunity and 
gigantic trusts given into her charge by the God of 
Nations. 



54 



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